


Everything Changes, Yo.

by queenfanfiction



Category: Torchwood
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-06
Updated: 2010-06-06
Packaged: 2017-10-09 22:58:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/92507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenfanfiction/pseuds/queenfanfiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the months before his rendezvous with Gwen and Rhys, Jack gets busy—setting up Torchwood USA, of course! (What, were you thinking of something else?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything Changes, Yo.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mtgat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mtgat/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Casting Call Sheet Leaked for Torchwood America](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/1020) by Melissa Wilson, Firefox News. 



> This unabashed bad!fic is based on the April Fool's prank that set half of Torchwood fandom running for cover. If you want to see how Torchwood USA really should be written, might I suggest sam_storyteller's Second City Torchwood and Edgar van Scyoc's Doctor Who?

Jen Cooper is halfway through filling up the empty soup bowl placed in front of her when she realizes that the owner of said bowl is staring directly at her boobs.

"Sorry, but the food's down here, mister," she tells the man, a rather fine-looking specimen with mussed spiky brown hair. He's wearing a blue woolen greatcoat, old-fashioned military issue, that definitely stands out from the rest of the homeless crowd in Detroit; Jen looks him over with her hardened-detective eyes, sizing him up as an out-of-towner down on his luck—

—and apparently she's not the only one with something 'hard.' Oh my. Jen's hand drops to her waist where she keeps her department-issued firearm at all times. The man was either packing something big, or...he was packing something else that was rather big.

"Relax, I'm not here to hurt anyone." The man leans across the counter with a sexy wink. "The name's Captain Jack Harkness. You're Detective Jen Cooper, aren't you?"

"Yeah, I am." Jen takes a slow step back from the counter, away from the strange man. "How'd you know, _Captain?_"

"Well, for starters, I'm slightly psychic. Also, you look an awful lot like your cousin. You do have a cousin, don't you? Gwen Cooper, lives in Cardiff?"

Jen narrows her eyes. "What do you know about Gw—"

"Please, ma'am," interrupts a little boy standing behind Harkness. He holds out a dirty bowl to Jen. "Please, may I have s'more?"

"Beat it, Oliver," Harkness says, not unkindly. He winks again at Jen, who is very tempted to bitchslap him into next year. "The nice lady and I have some talking to do."

"But I'm hungry!" the little boy protests. "And my name's not Oliver, it's Steven."

In the space of two nanoseconds, Harkness' entire flirtatious façade crumbles. His face scrunches up, and then he covers his face with his hands as he bawls loudly enough for the entire soup kitchen to hear.

Jen gulps as everyone in a twenty-foot radius turns to stare at her and Harkness. "Hey, mister? I mean, Captain?" She pats him awkwardly on the shoulder. "Uh. Let me—here, let's go into the back, how does that sound? I can get you some coffee if you want—"

"NO!" Harkness howls through his fingers. "NOT COFFEE I'LL NEVER HAVE COFFEE AGAIN NEVER EVER EVER!"

"Fine, fine, no coffee!" Jen hastily leads the sobbing Harkness away, aware that the little boy named Steven is watching the scene with wide eyes. Maybe she should just call the psychiatric ward and see if they were missing any patients with military fetishes.

* *

"You've got to be fucking _crazy._"

"No, I promise you, I'm not." Harkness (he said to call her Jack, but Jen doesn't really know if she should at this point) still has reddened eyes from his outburst, but at least he's no longer sniffing every three seconds. "Though I've been told I'm a crazy fucker before," he adds with a grin that promises nothing but dirty thoughts. And probably more than just thoughts.

"Enough with the innuendo already!" Jen throws up her hands in frustration. "I refuse to believe that there are _aliens_ in Detroit of all places! If there WERE aliens, Detroit isn't—we're not nearly exciting enough for aliens to be here! Why not Cleveland, Chicago—hell, why not even L.A.?!"

"Look, I've tried to tell you!" Harkness slaps the table between them for emphasis between words. "You. Have. A Rift. It spits out the drifting aliens and humans who've been lost in time and leaves them smack in the middle of Detroit. It's Torchwood's job to take care of them, that's what your cousin does—did. That's what we all did in Cardiff. And I'm here to set up something similar here in the States. Are you interested, or not?"

Jen crosses her arms and frowns at him. "Show me that aliens are real first, and then we'll talk about me quitting my perfectly-good job to work for a nutjob."

Harkness glances out the tiny office window behind him. "It's a deal. In fact..." He gets up and walks over, motioning for Jen to follow him. Once they are standing side-by-side in front of the cracked glass, Harkness points out a teenager in ragged jeans and a black hoodie who is bending over the hood of a parked car suspiciously. "See that punk? Watch this."

Whereupon Harkness yanks the window open, draws out a beaten-up gun from under his coat (huh, guess it was a gun, after all), and fires a perfect head-shot at the boy before Jen can stop him.

"WHAT THE FUCK!" Jen shrieks as the boy goes down in a spray of red gore. She whips out her own gun and trains it on Harkness' forehead. "You sonofabitch, you just killed an innocent kid!"

"Hey, watch where you're aiming that thing!" Harkness nods to the window. "Why don't you look out there instead?"

A very suspicious Jen does (still keeping her weapon aimed and ready) and nearly shoots Harkness on accident when the boy staggers to his feet, his once-blown-off head quickly healing itself until it looks like the boy had harmlessly tripped and come back up covered in blood and brain matter.

"Still looking good there, Justin!" Harkness calls through the window. The boy merely salutes with the New Jersey state bird and continues his work on hotwiring the car.

"That, Detective, is Justin Beemore, as he likes to call himself. As you've probably guessed, he isn't human. His kind are expert thieves and technicians, and they use what you'd expect to be their head as a fifth appendage that they can grow back if it's ever damaged." Harkness leans against the windowsill and smirks. "I've been doing the research, and Detroit's got the highest ratio of alien-to-human in the entire United States. Who do you think's been supplying the cheap labor for your car companies all this time?"

"My boyfriend works for Ford, and he's a hundred percent human, thanks," Jen snaps, trying to maintain control over the situation while her thoughts spin dizzily inside her head. "As for this Torchwood of yours, I've already got a job—"

"I know that, Detective. Maggie O'Connor, she's still commissioner, isn't she?" Jen nods dumbly. "I'll stop by the precinct and talk to her, we go back a ways. Listen, why don't you go home, talk to your boyfriend about this and think it over?" Harkness grins, a blinding smile that leaves Jen no room to argue. "Everything will be set up and ready by tomorrow oh-eight-hundred, I guarantee it."

* *

"A promotion?" Bryce Willis calls from the kitchen, his voice muffled by the running water from the tap. "But Jen, that's so COOL!"

"It's not really a promotion, Bryce." Jen sighs and hangs up the house phone in the den more viciously than she'd intended. "They're forming—some sort of special unit that they want me to join. I don't know, though..."

"Ooh, special ops! Something like NCIS or 24, yeah? I've seen it on TV, I understand if it's classified. Now there's something I can tell Fruitcake and Larry at the Super Bowl party next week, my Jen's moving up in the world—"

"For fuck's sake!" Jen growls into her phone as she gets a busy signal for the fifth time in an hour. "Maggie, answer already, goddammit!"

Finally, Jen decides to pull her trump card. She gets out her personal address book and dials the commissioner's private cell number. This time, the line is free, and the phone is answered on the last ring before voicemail. "This—had better—be good," says Maggie in a breathless contralto.

"Hey Maggie, it's me, Jen. Sorry, I couldn't get through your office line—" Jen pauses as gasping noises crackle through her speaker. "Is this a bad time?"

"Jen? Oh, Jen, yeah! No, not a bad time, not—oh. Oh my goodness. Uh. Listen, my phone got—knocked off, I guess—but I already heard about it, Captain Harkness was here. I've signed the forms, you're officially working for Torchwood now—mmm yes."

"Are you sure this isn't a bad ti—wait a minute." Realization dawns. "Is Captain Harkness there right now?"

"Nope!" Maggie squeaks. "No, not at all, he left ages ago—_Jesus CHRIST more yes right there!_"

Jen hangs up without another word. There are many things Jen would prefer not to know about the Commissioner, and besides, she's never been one for phone-sex.

"Bryce?" No answer except the sound of dishes clattering in the sink. Jen taps her fingers on the table impatiently. "Honey, I'm feeling kind of horny, where'd you put the vibrator?"

The kitchen abruptly falls quiet, and less than two seconds later Bryce pokes his head in the door. "Bottom drawer on your left behind the box of handcuffs," he says with a hopeful expression. "Need any help?"

Jen grins. "Why, I thought you'd never ask."

* *

At precisely seven-forty-five the next morning, Jen is picked up by a taxi sent for her by Torchwood. The driver takes her to the plaza of the Renaissance Center, where Harkness is already waiting for her.

"You're going to love what we did to the place," he gushes as he leads Jen through a labyrinth of staircases and underground tunnels. "You'd be amazed how many public buildings in this country have secret underground hideouts, it was so hard to choose just one..." The tunnel closes off ahead of them and coalesces into a plain circular door. "And here we are! Ready to meet your teammates?"

And before Jen can answer, Harkness throws the door open dramatically.

Jen blinks and nearly trips over the threshold. It might have been a more impressive entrance had there been any light inside.

"Sorry, Captain!" A man's voice rings through the darkness. "Working on the electricity, give me just a second!" Sure enough, the lights flicker on within the minute, revealing a large metal room, complete with four workstations and a computer mainframe that spirals to the top of the thirty-foot ceiling.

"Welcome to the new Torchwood USA, Jen Cooper." Harkness takes Jen by the arm and leads her around to the occupants of three of the workstations. The first is a young Asian man, his dark eyes fixed on the computer screen in front of him while his fingers fly over the keyboard. "This is Bojoon Kim, our resident tech genius. Found him slaving away at Area 51 and offered him better health coverage than they ever could."

"Nah, our dental was cheaper," the man replies distractedly without turning his head. "And call me Bo, for God's sake."

"Right, Bo it is. Over there's our team medic, Doctor Lindsay Bachman from the CDC. Doctor Bachman, say hello!" A pretty and petite redhead glances up from the medical chart she's studying at her desk and waves. "And last but not least, here's Sergeant Kyle Jordan." A skinny figure decked out in camouflage fatigues (as modern as Harkness' military dress is outdated) jumps to his feet and offers a nervous salute. "At ease, Sergeant. Kyle'll be taking over the hot seat once I leave tonight."

"You're _leaving?_" Jen sputters. "But—but, you just got here!"

"Yeah, well, you know. Earth's too small for me and all that jazz." Harkness shrugs. "But you'll be fine. You'll still have time to feed the homeless, Bo can keep playing World of Warcraft on the side, Lindsay can finish her project on finding a cure for cancer, and Kyle...well, Kyle can do whatever it is he does best. The four of you should be able to deal with aliens with almost no background training and a stash of high-powered automatic weapons, right? I mean, what could possibly go wrong?"

"I've got a question!" Bo calls from his corner. "Can't we at least hire one more person? Someone who'll clean up after us and get us everywhere on time?"

"And he should definitely look good in a suit," Lindsay adds dreamily.

"But I look good in a suit," sulks Kyle.

"Sorry, that's not a suit. That's a uniform," Lindsay informs him. "Try something that's tighter on the ass and I'll think about it."

"Absolutely not!" Harkness' lower lip trembles, and Jen begins to inch away slowly from the rising volcano of tears and snot. "That would be a disgrace to Ianto's memory! I'll never forget Ianto, he was my soulmate! We were perfect for each other! It didn't matter that he kept his Cyberman girlfriend in the cellar and she nearly killed us all, he loved me and I loved him and I'll never forget him, not in a million years!"

Silence reigns, broken only by the sounds of Harkness' sniffling.

"Oh-kay then," Jen says slowly. "Anything else we should know before you go?"

"No, but—" Harkness' mood clears so fast that Jen swears she has emotional whiplash. "My plane doesn't leave for another five hours. So before I go back and tell Gwen that I'm ditching this junk planet, anyone up for a team orgy?"

"But we're five people, there's no way we can do this evenly!" Lindsay protests.

"Trust me, it's possible, we did it all the time in Cardiff. But no guys for me!" Harkness sniffs as a single tear tracks down his face. "Ever since Ianto—"

"Yeah, yeah, your true love's gone and you're going to be celibate forever in his memory, we got it the first time around," Bo snaps, already working at his fly as he walks over to Kyle's table. "On your knees, soldier."

Kyle quickly ducks down behind his desk, leaving a clear view of Lindsay eyeing Harkness and Jen rather hungrily. And when Harkness reaches down to pinch Jen on the ass, Jen doesn't protest; she just rolls her eyes and leans closer so that he'll have better grabbing range.

Maybe that would be Torchwood USA's new motto. Torchwood: Cleaning up the aliens with enough time for a round of quickies before lunch.

* *

When Jen gets home before Bryce that evening, she immediately heads for the den, boots up their computer, and turns on her instant messenger.

_c00perc4r3s has logged in.  
c00perc4r3s:_ gwen!  
_coppercooper has logged in.  
coppercooper:_ hey jen  
_c00perc4r3s:_ guess what!!  
_coppercooper:_ what  
_coppercooper:_ ?  
_c00perc4r3s:_ i joined torchwood this morning  
_c00perc4r3s:_ and i just had the most amazing 3way sex with our boss!!1!!!  
_coppercooper:_ ...  
_c00perc4r3s:_ lmao  
_c00perc4r3s:_ jack's really something isn't he  
_c00perc4r3s:_ how'd he get so flexible  
_c00perc4r3s:_ guess who's the hotter cousin now ahahahaha  
_coppercooper:_ fuck you.  
_c00perc4r3s:_ oh he did already  
_c00perc4r3s:_ many times  
_c00perc4r3s:_ ;D  
_coppercooper:_ xP  
_coppercooper has logged out.  
c00perc4r3s has logged out._


End file.
